TRADITIONAL GAMES

PIGEON FLIES!

I remember how my comrades used to tease me at our game of 'Pigeon flies!' All the children gather round a table and the leader calls out 'Pigeon flies! Hen flies! Crow flies! Bee flies!' and so on; and at each call we were supposed to raise our fingers. Sometimes, however, he would call out: 'Dog flies! Fox flies!' or some other like impossibility, to catch us. If any one raised a finger, he was made to pay a forfeit. Now my playmates never failed to wink and smile mockingly at me when one of them called 'Man flies!' for at the word I would always lift my finger very high, as a sign of absolute conviction; and I refused with energy to pay the forfeit. The more they laughed at me, the happier I was, hoping that some day the laugh would be on my side.
— A. Santos-Dumont, 'My Air-Ships,' New York, The Century Company, 1904

When someone quoted a "gold and silver" verse on the lyrics game in November 2015, I wrote:

I kept thinking of that song, but not because of this verse. When he caught a kid, the "bridge" ends would secretly ask him or her a question. The "real" question was "Gold or silver?" But sometimes we'd ask something different, like "Beatles or Rolling Stones?" (it was the 1960's) or "East or West?" They chose, not knowing which of us they would get. Then they went behind that person. When the last person was caught, and chose, then there was a sort of tug of war, with the two bridges holding hands and the others pulling on the waist of the person in front. It never mattered who won. I think the two right behind the former bridge became the new bridge, if they wanted to, or others would volunteer, if we still had time before we had to go back into classrooms. It was hard to get enough kids together to play it that way outside of school.

That was at Española Elementary school, on the old campus "on the hill," played in the central area which was the playground until about 1965 when that beame a Jr. High only.and the equipment was removed.—Sandra Dodd